Generally speaking, the lighting devices of most of office buildings, factories and dwelling houses are controlled by a wired lighting control system; in other words, the lighting devices are usually controlled by the lighting switches installed on the wall. Thus, if the user wants to turn on or turn off the lighting device at a specific position, or adjusts its brightness, the user only needs to walk to the switch corresponding to the lighting device and then the user can operate the lighting device. Therefore, the wired lighting control system can help the user conveniently operate the lighting device; however, if there are many lighting devices distributed at different positions over a large area, the user cannot operate all of these lighting devices in a short time; in this case, the wired lighting control system is not very convenient for the user.
As a result, the wireless lighting control system was developed so as to solve the above problem. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,110,996 disclosed a modular wireless lighting control system, which uses a central computer to transmit control signals to multiple transceivers via wireless network so as to control all lighting devices inside a building. Although the wireless lighting control system does not need complicated wiring and can control a large number of lighting devices in a short time. However, as the wireless lighting control system needs to transmit control signals via the wireless network, but the wireless network is not always stable; therefore, once the wireless network is disconnected, the user absolutely cannot control these lighting devices. Thus, the reliability of the wireless lighting control system still needs to be improved.
In addition, the practicality of the wireless lighting control system is still in dispute. For example, in general, after a user returns to home from work, the user will directly turn on the lighting devices by the switches installed on the wall; under above circumstance, it will be very inconvenient for the user to use a mobile phone, a computer or other wireless control devices to control the lighting devices in the house. On the contrary, when the user is going to sleep, the user will usually use a wireless control device to turn off all lighting devices in the house at a time. For the reason, the house only having the wireless lighting control system cannot conform to the habits of most users without further improvements. As described above, the wired lighting control system and the wireless lighting control system have their advantages, but they still have shortcomings which need to be overcome.
Accordingly, it has become an important issue to provide a lighting control system and the corresponding lighting device capable of not only achieving the advantages of both of the wired lighting control system and the wireless lighting control system, but also improving their shortcomings.